


The Entity

by megiaolf



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, ghost phil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 01:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14415126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megiaolf/pseuds/megiaolf
Summary: An Entity has been living with Dan for the last three months. It's time for him to confront it.





	The Entity

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a thing that I just found in my wips folder from over a year ago. It's ridiculous how much my style has changed. Well, the concept is still interesting to me so let me know if you want more.

There’s a hot cup of coffee on the counter when he finally makes it out of bed and stumbles into the kitchen. He lives alone. Better men than him would have screamed and run for the woods, but they probably also had better senses of self preservation. Dan Howell has a very poor sense of self preservation. One could even argue he doesn’t have one.

He picks up the mug and takes a sip. A bit sweeter than he likes, but he isn’t complaining.

When he feels a bit more awake, he notices the slimy black tar he’s nicknamed ‘ghost juice’ sticking to the side of his mug. He sighs and mutters a small thank you into the air.

The curtains whoosh.

When he’s almost done with the coffee, he reaches up to the cabinet to get his shreddies when another deliberate burst of air shuts it close on his fingers. He screams in pain, curses and turns around to send his non corporeal intruder back to whatever hell he crawled out of with his scathing words, when he notices a rather macabre looking plate of food lying next to the oven.

Cradling his injured hand to his chest, he steps in closer to investigate. There’s an omelette on the plate, if you can call it that. It’s burnt in places and it looks to be stuffed with raw onions and mushrooms, a combination that threatens to make him sick, but the strangest part of the meal is surely ketchup heart on top.

It doesn’t look much like a heart. It looks like a punched placenta, but he deduces the intent from the date. There are black skid marks around the side of the plate, almost as if someone tried to wipe black sauce from it with a napkin while simultaneously secreting it out of their fingers.

He’s impressed. This is a first. He’s gotten used to finding occasional cups of coffee, frozen pizza in the oven and his charger on the sofa beside him when he’d most certainly left it in the kitchen, but this is different. This took premeditated effort.

He takes the plate and sits down on the breakfast bar to work on removing the offending onions. When he finally takes a bite, he’s surprised at how edible it is. If it hadn’t been for the overpowering ketchup smeared all over the eggs, he’d actually be enjoying the meal.

He finishes it all the same and brings it over to the sink to wash the dishes. A gentle gust of air ruffles his hair and he has to bite back a smile. He places the plate back and turns around to address the empty room.

“I hate onions.”

He pauses. Nothing.

He sighs and starts to walk away. A spoon clatters to the floor at his feet. He picks it up. It’s the obnoxiously pink plastic soup spoon Lisa’s daughter got him for Christmas last year. It’s got little hearts printed all over it in bright red. He immediately feels like a dick.

“Right. Sorry. Happy Valentine’s Day to you too. Thanks for breakfast.”

He pauses again but there’s still no response. He shakes his head and leaves.

The door closes softly after him.

 

*

 

His bathroom is a mess. The bath is filled to the brim with sickly sweet smelling bubbles, there are at least three different kinds of bath bombs thrown in from the looks of it, his bath mat is soaked through and there is water everywhere. The mirror is foggy from the steam and there’s a dripping black heart shaped smudge right in the middle of it made from ghost juice.

Dan sighs. As endearing as it is, he has to clean up after The Entity a lot. He still appreciates it though. He’ll do just about anything to not feel alone today.

The bath looks inviting despite the sickly sweet smell and he doesn’t want it to get cold but he can feel The Entity’s presence right by the mirror.

“Hey benevolent spirit person, thanks for drawing me a bath? Not a sentence I thought I’d ever say to be honest”, he chuckles under his breath.

“May I have some privacy please?” He asks his own reflection uncertainly.

The door closes with an ominous creaking sound. He undresses and gets into the bath. It’s a bit too hot for him but he embraces the scalding temperature. It’s been a long week, physically and emotionally, and he could do with the cleanse the scorching water offers.

The weird mixture of bath bombs and oils does nothing to diminish his relaxation but he is curious as to why The Entity thought he needed all of this. Is he that obvious?

He lays his head back against the rim and closes his eyes. He has so many things to do. So many. It is Sunday tomorrow. He has two meetings with potential buyers. And groceries. And he needs to get a haircut. And he has to go to Lisa’s for the rehearsal dinner…

He is so tired. He feels young and homesick. He misses his mother, if only she were here…he stops that train of thought immediately. That is a spiral he does not want to go into right now. He doesn’t have the energy.

He tries to concentrate on the piece he is working on. He visualises the way he’d wanted it to look. He can’t quite make it into that. There’s technical problems, structural problems, he can’t figure out the perfect shade he wants to use. Always falling short of his imagination, almost as if he overestimates his abilities. Maybe he isn’t made for this line of work after all. It’s a depressing thought.

He is very rudely jerked out of his self deprecating reverie with a loud noise coming from outside the door. He sits up and is surprised to see the huge gramophone he’d procured from the junk shop for his next piece placed unceremoniously outside his bathroom door, with its horn wedged in through the gap.

It’s playing a tune he doesn’t quite recognise, he’s sure it’s the random record that came with it. The ubiquitous ghost juice is dripping from the bottom of the horn.

He settles back down and notices the bubbles have dissipated and guesses that his otherworldly companion is most certainly in the room with him right now. He tries to gather what remaining bubbles there are from the sides and cover himself. His mind helpfully provides him with an image of that one Harry Potter movie where he’d tried to hide his modesty from his ghostly friend with bubbles. The resemblance is uncanny. Only, he isn’t quite spooked by his ghostly friend. Which is saying something. He has surpassed Harry Potter in stupidity.

He gets out of the bath when he’s on the verge of turning into a giant prune and sets about cleaning the mess in the bathroom. The ghost juice is almost impossible to get out his mirror.

He remembers a listicle he’d read somewhere and scrunches up some old newspaper to try and rub it out. It works but it’s a long and arduous process.

He feels the telltale cold air at the back of his neck, ruffling his curls. It almost feels like the slightest touch of quivering fingers. He smiles and makes a placating noise at the back of his throat. He’s gotten quite good at communicating to this entity considering he’s never seen it or has any tangible proof that it even exists.

 

*

 

After he gets dressed and restores his gramophone to its proper place, he considers working on his project, he has a deadline coming up after all, but after staring at the mylar paper all over the walls and the unopened cans of paint in the corner for five straight minutes, he decides that today is not the day.

He slumps over to the living room and plonks himself in front of the television, his fingers finding the remote from the depths of the sofa and turning it on. He feels a dip in the couch next to him.

He browses Netflix for about half an hour after which he comes to the conclusion that it’s finally time to address the elephant in the room.

He turns the television off and turns around to face the mystical entity who has been trying get his attention for the last three months since he had moved into the apartment.

“So…”, he addresses the dark slimy spot on the couch in front of him and strokes his chin in contemplation. He’s not sure what his first direct question should be.  
He settles on, “will you please stop secreting your weird ghost juice around my house? It’s getting kinda annoying.”

The slime gets smudged around on the seat as if someone halfheartedly tries to wipe it off. Some lands on his favorite grey cushion. It’s hardly distinguishable as the cushion is dark in color to begin with, but Dan is appalled.

He clutches the cushion to his chest, points an accusatory finger at the spot and screeches dramatically, “Do not do that! I swear to god, I will eviscerate you, I do not care that you do not have a body. I will build you one and end it. Painfully!”

The curtains billow and the television turns itself on and off a few times. Dan raises a unimpressed eyebrow at the spot he has deemed the ghost spot. It’s quite a scary and violent situation but The Entity did make him a shitty omelette just this morning, so he isn’t exactly shivering in terror.

It eventually stops and peace is once again restored. Dan returns the cushion to the couch, careful to avoid the inky stains.

He sits back down and contemplates it for a few moments. Eventually arriving to a decision, he slaps his thigh and stands back up, “Right. I have something for you. Come on.”

He makes his back to his study and pries open the drawer of a vintage looking dresser. He can sense The Entity hovering curiously over him.

He finds what he is looking for lets out a quiet “Aha” as he settles down on the floor with a rectangular box in front of him. He blows the dust off the cover noisily and looks expectantly around the room.

He is greeted with a harsh gust of cold air to his face and an almost imperceptible noise of derision.

Dan sniffs and turns his nose up haughtily. “Let’s see you come up with a better solution then.”

He removes the cover and pulls out a wooden board and a small heart shaped piece of wood. The board is marked with the letters of the alphabet, numbers and a few phrases. It looks old. He sets the it down on the floor reverentially, places the piece of wood on the board and pouts pitifully at the black stain on the mylar paper near the window.

“Humor me, please?”

He feels the air sifting through his hair and smiles. He places his index fingers on the planchette, takes a deep breathe and asks the question that has been troubling him the most throughout this ordeal, “Are you a ghost?”

He feels the wooden piece vibrate slightly underneath his fingertips. He loosens the pressure and tries to give it space to move. After a few tense seconds, the planchette starts moving. He allows it to guide his fingers.

It moves all the way up to the top of the board and jerk stops on top of the “yes” embellished inside an ornate square box.

He gulps. Suddenly all of this feels too real. Whatever had happened until now could be explained away by him being really really unmindful or having a serious disease, but this is real. This really is happening. Ghosts are real and they apparently have a tendency to coddle twenty three year old social recluses and drip weird black slime everywhere.

Years of terrifying horror movies and hacksaw wielding vengeful spirits have not prepared him for this. He has no idea how to respond to this situation.

He looks up towards the window and contemplates what he should ask next, when suddenly the planchette slips from his fingers and starts flying across the board.

He stares at it confusedly till it stops and then he remembers that he was supposed to follow it and write it down.

“Oops. Wasn’t paying attention. Could you do that again? I missed it.”

The door bangs shut angrily.

“I’m sorry! I’ll get it this time. And go a bit slower, yeah? I can’t keep up with your superhuman speed.”

He digs his phone out of his pocket, opens the notes app, and stares at the board expectantly.

The planchette moves of its own accord to the letter I and stops. He writes it down and waits for the next character. It moves at a snail’s pace to the C next. He rolls his eyes.

“Really?”

The planchette starts flying across the board again albeit at a normal speed this time.

When it’s done, Dan stares at the words on the screen and feels his face heating up.

I CAN TYPE YOU DINGUS

“Well I didn’t know that!”

The planchette starts moving angrily again and he holds up his hands.

“Stop! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll go get my laptop.”

He goes to fetch his laptop from the living room when he notices the black stains on the couch. The entity will surely secrete juices over his laptop if it were to type on it and he’s not keen on that idea.

He fetches a roll of cling film from the kitchen, tears a square of it and carefully covers the keyboard with it. He then opens a word file, very dramatically names it The Mysteries Of The Universe and turns the laptop towards the window.

He watches the plastic accumulate slime as the keys seem to compress and decompress out of nowhere. He’s very proud of his neat little idea.

After a few minutes of very slow typing during which he lazily scrolls through tumblr, the laptop is turned towards him again.

There’s a small paragraph worth of writing on the screen. He reads it and his stomach drops. He looks fearfully up at the window where the slime is getting lazily smudged around. He gulps and reads it again. He’s never been more terrified in his life.

.

**Author's Note:**

> [link to fic on tumblr](https://megiaolf.tumblr.com/post/173244000209/title-the-entity-chapter-1-read-on-ao3-rating-g)   
> 


End file.
